Pretty interesting. I felt like I'd end up not getting one resource at all an entire run, and thus didn't have any "interesting decisions" to make after the first few rounds - just anything that didn't reduce that stat to 0 (for example, one run I never got any +blue stat)

I really like the concept and it has a lot of potential with some balance updates in the future, but as of right now, it really easy to just stick with two cards that cancel each other out, leaving you at max stats the whole game.

The game was confusing and took me awhile to figure out. I think some text instructions would help out. I like the animations :)

I ended up ending my own life :laughing: . because I felt i can live indefinitely.

I really like this idea. I hadn't thought about how we have to sacrifice one thing over the other due to time. I also like the summary at the end. Oh and the preview as you hover a card over the other is a great UI touch. Nicely done!

"After 75 years, you finally wallowed away in misery"
How unfortunate, haha. Great game! I wish there would be a few more options though. The art style was great.

Sort-of reminds me of the android game my game's inspired by. Great game.

Took me a while to understand what was going on, till I realized I was making a choice to take effect on the next turn. I think a simple year counter on the main screen would've helped.
I really liked the art, music and the theme (and how you introduced it). Had fun playing it, though it can be a little bit depressing =p (which is cool, I think that's the mood you wanted to bring).

As others have already said, a bit too random - first few runs I didnt get any red ones and was wondering what I was doing wrong :D

Pretty neat otherwise though! Graphics are pretty and the music really sets the mood

A clever idea. I like the card dragging mechanic a lot, it's very clever and fits the game perfectly. My big complaint is that it seems like the cards are trying to tell this meandering story where you have to make decisions to move ahead (i noticed that when I swapped one card back and forth, I always got the same third card), but it's hard to follow what this story is, because I can't tell what activities the icons represent.

Good core mechanic, would be nice to see more transparency around the "tree" of activities.

Great game! I wish there was a text description for each icon, because it's not clear what does it mean.

Great idea, but it were hard to understand what is going on at the start, but after some time it became interesting

I really liked it, the art is nice and the music to. pretty melancolic after you get whats going on. I just kinda missed a little tooltip with mouse over the icon to make it clear what choices i am making. Pretty good over all.

Hehe, cool concept. The mechanics work very nicely, and I like the way the UI updates when you drag cards. I think this would be a game worth developing post-compo. :thumbsup:

Really great concept and use of the theme. It took me a while to figure out what was going on but once I did it really did feel clever and deep, as much for the gameplay and the story. Really original concept.

Interesting take on the theme.
I genuinely never thought I'd play a gamejam entry based upon sylvia plaths The Bell Jar, lol

Dude well done! A fantastic little game. And an excellent use of the theme. I want there to be a little more to it. I got bored quickly. But for the first bit, I was enjoying myself.

Really great take on the theme! Initially the concept was confusing, but after the first play through it "clicked" for me.

As others have mentioned, the player can get to a point where everything is maxed out and nothing changes. It would be great if there was a little more variety and maybe as time goes on you introduce another row of cards to introduce vertical dragging as well.

Overall I really enjoyed this game. The music and artwork were well done.

"After 4 years, you lost hope. You lazed about and had lunch with friends." Sounds about right.

Second attempt I think I survived until the end, just keep getting the -1x4 one popping up, replacing it with another, and repeating forever.

Would have been more amusing knowing what the cards are called while playing, instead of just at the end.

Feels very nice to play, and the concept is interesting too, and a nice take on the theme. However, you have some cards that cancel each other out, and this provokes a bug of always getting the same card drawn afterwards (even if eventually you hide one of the two good cards).

Overall a very nice experience though :)

Very interesting game and the best use of the theme I've seen so far!
Loved the ending screen too.
Well done!

Very original concept :-)

Love the concept of this. Besides the 'continuing' bug people have mentioned, my main wish is to know what the activities on the cards do. :) It's really cool idea and I like the concept of handling your life's choices through the accepting (and dropping) of a card.

Great Idea, I'll echo the wish of actually knowing what the actions were (beyond icons).
Worked really well, although at some point I felt like I reached an equilibrium.(at cost of not trying anything new, i could remain perfectly healthy.) When I broke out for the hell of it i faced the opposite: constant bad choices led to rapid doom. (oh, I see someone else found the same thing)
Anyway, great game good use of theme.

Really interesting idea. I ended up with a combo that made 0 progress, but I could slide back and forth infinitely. I liked how the mechanics reflected the bigger picture. Well done!


I can play it forever :)

Great concept! The mechanics are creative and can be improved (good enough for compo!). The background music is really suitable for the game. Nice job!

Thanks for playing and for the feedback everyone!

@lastleaf @arkinrev @joh @foodzilla @jhell @jimbly @aplite @pukami @exper105 @somewhatInfinite

Thanks for pointing out how easy it is to find two cards that can be swapped infinitely. I realized that this was a problem early on and meant to add a staling mechanic to the cards (they would automatically swap out if they were active for three turns or something similar) but ultimately I didn't prioritize fixing this because it sort of feels on theme. Sure you can pick two activities and tread water forever, but you will never experience new cards. You can sacrifice (heh) security and routine for the chance to get farther down the tree. Obviously not the best for gameplay.

You often get to the point of never seeing new cards because new cards are only added when using a card for the first time. There was a fallback deck of only bad things if your main deck was empty. I tried to indicate this with icons floating down towards where the cards come from. It's not really enough feedback. I could have explained better but I tried to do it all without text as best I could.

@sky-coding

There is a small tutorial page if you hover over the question mark. I'm not sure if you meant that there should be more (you'd probably be right).

@mcovert @imer

Balance could have been greatly improved. I would have liked to layout the card tree in a way that guarantees more interesting and tricky decisions. Especially since that is basically all of the gameplay.

@sargonius @foodzilla @jimbly @raphael-maia @squirmonkey

I debated putting some text on the cards. I should have put the art next to the text on the final screen at the very least, if not a hover tooltip on the main screen.

As mentioned in other comments, it's very easy to find two cards that cancel each other out and just play forever :) other than that, it's a fun game with a fun concept, just needs a bit of balancing! Fits the theme very well!

Cool concept. I'm usually not a fan of these types of games but the graphics and the music set the mood well and I enjoyed it. I felt that the gameplay was not very balanced and it was hard to survive and find cards that gave you the red icon. I also felt that there needed to be more cards on the playing field. Having a 2D grid, even a 2x2 square, would have been a lot more challenging and a lot more fun. That being said, you did a great job of fleshing out a unique concept in the 48 hours. I would like to see this go farther! :)

An interesting game with a kind of mechanics. I put a rating) Please rating and me, thanks in advance)

Great job! Like other statements, It took me another go to get it. Interesting concept.

Sometimes in life, you think you have a choice. But you don't.


Core mechanic of the game is super interesting and I'd love to see the mechanic fleshed out to maybe give names to the different cards. There's definitely something here.

This game is quite unusual and unlike any other. If nothing else, I'd always admit that.
Makes you think a bit about your life also.
Thank you.

Brilliant interpretation of theme! Concept, music and artwork bring together very good metaphor of life. Really simple, but enjoyable gameplay.

As others noted, some hints on what icons mean would be great. As there is definitely some room for story telling, it might work as journal quotes [of choices made], like "Today I didn't go to the party, and ate a bucket of ice cream alone. Now, calories my true friends!"

Love the idea, though it took at least 10 runs to see a Red+ (so at least 10 times of dying after the first 5 years).The music is great and the UI is really nice and I love the death screen stats.

Adding the above mentioned stalling/discard after N uses mechanic with more cards and it would be even better.

BTW. if the player switches the cards too fast and then stops, the resource animations can take a while to catch up.

Maximum amount of awesome for minimum amount of mechanics --awesome storytelling. I really liked the concept, and it was one of the best uses of theme so far. Fantastic game.

Sorry it took so long to rate, but definitely one of the most amazing super minimalist games I've played in the jam. Gives me a big Reigns vibe.